Jew hatred is now defended as academic expression —how American universities and free speech absolutists became unwitting allies of modern antisemitism.
Bernard Lewis once remarked on the paradox of Western freedom: The liberties so cherished by liberal democracies are precisely the instruments used by their enemies to plot their demise. Enter the absolutist champions of free speech—those who, in their eagerness to be consistent, end up defending not just the freedom to speak, but the freedom to incite, intimidate and endorse the obliteration of their own civilization. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
In the name of defending the First Amendment, these free speech absolutists routinely excuse open displays of support for Hamas, a group that doesn’t exactly top the charts in human rights, women’s equality or freedom of expression. Never mind that U.S. law—8 U.S.C. § 1182 and § 1227—makes it clear: Non-citizens who endorse or promote terrorist organizations are eligible for deportation. Hamas is not a misunderstood liberation movement—it is, by every U.S. government standard, a designated terrorist group. That some in the West insist on defending its cheerleaders in the academy is a testament not to their courage, but to their obliviousness.
Legal clarity doesn’t stop there. American civil rights statutes—like 18 U.S.C. § 241 and 42 U.S.C. § 1985—draw a sharp line between expression and conspiracy. You can shout your opinions from the rooftops, but if you conspire to suppress the constitutional rights of others through threats or violence, you’re no longer a protester—you’re a criminal. And the courts, to their credit, know the difference.
The Supreme Court reinforced this boundary in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010), ruling that even well-meaning “nonviolent support” for terrorist groups can aid their legitimacy and operations. Teaching the Taliban how to file amicus briefs may sound quaint, but it’s still material support.
Enter Yoram Hazony, who lifts the curtain on the intellectual rot at the core of the modern university. Here, in the sanctuary of higher learning, the debate is not about ideas but about which groups deserve to exist. University administrations—joined by even self-described anti-Marxists—have lost the courage to oppose faculty members who advocate the extermination of Jews. Instead, they take refuge in that most threadbare of dogmas: absolute free speech. You see, under this view, we must allow debates about genocide—as long as both sides are heard. Jews today, Ukrainians tomorrow. All fair game for the intellectual coliseum.
This is not principled liberalism. It’s moral abdication dressed in tweed.
College campuses, once crucibles of reason, have morphed into petri dishes of anti-Israel venom. Entire departments—Palestinian Studies, Post-Colonial Theory, Insert-Grievance-Here Studies—are now devoted to a single cause: the elimination of the Jewish state. Not critique. Elimination. And they do so not with nuanced argument, but with threats, intimidation and systematic suppression of dissent. The objective is not academic inquiry, but political indoctrination.
Universities have abandoned academic freedom in favor of unreflective partisanship. The result is a betrayal of their founding mission. Not every faculty member is to blame, but most are complicit through silence. Departments that once pursued truth now traffic in propaganda, giving intellectual respectability to ideologies that, stripped of academic jargon, are indistinguishable from classical antisemitism.
The mechanisms are sophisticated. Faculty produce elaborate pseudo-histories and ethical treatises that cast Israel not as a flawed democracy, but as an irredeemable monstrosity. The Jewish state, they argue, is not merely wrong but wicked, genocidal and fundamentally illegitimate. Worse, this ideology extends to Jews everywhere, who are cast as accessories to the alleged crimes of Israel. The result? A rebirth of the oldest hatred, dressed in progressive garb.
Hunter College’s 2025 Palestinian Studies Professorship provides a textbook case. The job description included the usual buzzwords: “settler colonialism,” “genocide” and “apartheid”—a lexicon less suited for scholarship than for indictment. This is not education. It’s the institutionalization of slander, and it pressures Jewish students to redefine—or abandon—their identity to survive.
And here, predictably, arrives the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), armed with a pocket Constitution and the unwavering belief that the antidote to institutionalized academic Nazification is simply more speech. As if the problem were a lack of opinions. As if the ideology that cheers for Hamas and silences dissent is somehow going to be talked out of its worldview by another symposium on Enlightenment values. FIRE’s optimism is touching—and dangerously naïve. They mistake a moral cancer for a seminar topic.
Even more misguided is the intellectually flabby argument—usually uttered with the furrowed brow of deep concern—that cracking down on Islamist incitement today will lead to the suppression of Jewish speech tomorrow. This is the logical equivalent of refusing to stop an arsonist because one day the fire department might get carried away and turn on your toaster. There is a vast moral and legal difference between protecting the right to express unpopular or even offensive views, and turning universities into ideological crematoria where Jews are systematically delegitimized, dehumanized and destroyed—academically, socially and existentially.
It is one thing to defend the right to dissent. It is another to confuse that right with the campaign to normalize the rhetoric of extermination.
Deporting or detaining individuals who are not American citizens—who enjoy limited access to habeas corpus and other due process protections—when they are found to be collaborating with or enabling Hamas is not a draconian restriction on freedom of expression. It is a rational and constitutional exercise of executive authority. Treating Mahmoud Khalil as a poster child for the Bill of Rights is like giving Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize: It is a decision born not of courage or principle, but of the same muddled, infantile faith that terrorists can be rehabilitated with civics lessons and constitutional niceties. It is not only foolish—it is profoundly dangerous.
The free speech absolutists are disconnected from the past uses of such liberties by those seeking to attack and eliminate the Jewish people. In an essay written two years ago, before Oct. 7, Dara Horn observed that “In an April 2023 lecture, David Nirenberg, the historian, presented the example of an activist with a large following whose boundary-pushing rhetoric met with accusations of antisemitism.”
The activist pointed out, as Nirenberg put it, that antisemitism “was merely an accusation that Jews used to silence criticism and squash free speech.” He brought libel lawsuits against newspapers that accused him of antisemitism and won them. It is unfortunate for those making this argument today that this activist was named Adolf Hitler.”
In this climate, to simply call for more “free speech” or “dialogue” is not only inadequate—it’s dangerously obtuse. The principles of liberty must be defended with equal vigor against those who seek to exploit them for destruction. Freedom, if it is to endure, requires discernment. And courage. Extremism in the defense of liberty is uniquely suited to ensuring that extremism against the Jewish people prospers. What the universities and America need now is not more tolerance for the intolerant, but a resolute stand against the ideologues who would transform temples of learning and our Constitution into engines of hate.
